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Tag Archives: Wendy D.

Fifty years ago today as I write, the Summer of Love was in full bloom. It was, in many ways, a pleasant Delaware Valley Saturday: the temperature topped out at 84 degrees (Fahrenheit) and fell back into the low 70s overnight – far from perfect, but expected. Humidity, always a factor in this neck of the woods, felt like a wet blanket.

On the other side of Pennsylvania, in Allegheny County (home to Pittsburgh and a few other cities), 16-year-old Wendy D. was navigating life’s oft-unexpected highs and lows during what had quickly turned into a personal summer of love. The previous evening, her main beau, Tom, totaled his car. He was shaken up, but not – thankfully – seriously injured.

I say “main” beau because Wendy was also dating – behind Tom’s back, no less – a college man, Scott, who took her to a stock car race this very night. Vroom, vroom!

Meanwhile, across the country in California, younger Valerie S. had a good day, too: eating watermelon, painting, and making hamburger for dinner.

On the surface, life was good: unemployment ticked down .1 percent to 3.8 percent; inflation crept up .3 percent to 2.8 percent for the year; and America, as a whole, was intrigued by the Summer of Love headquartered in San Francisco. At the same time, however, large swaths of the nation were peering into the abyss of hopelessness; thus, race riots spread like wildfires that summer through many cities. During early-morning hours of the 23rd, a police raid on an unlicensed bar in Detroit sparked a five-day riot that resulted in 43 deaths, more than 1189 injured and $40-45 million worth of property damage.

On the entertainment front, one of history’s oddest pairings came to an end earlier in the week when the Monkees lost their opening act, Jimi Hendrix.

The No. 1 album in the land was an LP sans a hit single on the charts: the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band. It was in its fourth week in the top spot, and would remain there through October 7th.

And, with that, here’s today’s Top 5: July 22, 1967, based on the charts at Weekly Top 40.

1) The Association – “Windy.” Enjoying its fourth week at No. 1 is this breezy song.

2) Frankie Valli – “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You.” A years-long effort by Valli, Bob Gaudio and Bob Crewe to launch a successful solo career culminated with this classic, which hit No. 2 in the pop charts this week.

3) The Doors – “Light My Fire.” Rising to No. 3 (from 8) is the debut single by Jim Morrison & Co. This performance is from the Jonathan Winters Show.

4) The 5th Dimension – “Up, Up and Away.” Holding steady at No. 7 is this Jimmy Webb-penned tune, which was the first Top 10 hit by Marilyn McCoo, Billy Davis Jr. & friends.

5) Janis Ian – “Society’s Child.” Also this week, Janis Ian’s debut single – written when she was 13 and released when she was 15 – celebrated its second week at No. 14. This spot, on a Leonard Bernstein TV special, was its introduction to a wide audience.

And a few bonus tracks…

6) The Hollies – “Carrie Anne.” This infectious single from the Manchester-born pop group, which was on its way to the Top 10, rises to No. 23 (from 28).

7) The Bee Gees – “To Love Somebody.” One of the week’s power plays is this now-classic song, which jumped from No. 79 to 42.

8) and 9) The Monkees – “Pleasant Valley Sunday” and “Words.” The Prefab Four click on all cylinders with Goffin-King’s “Pleasant Valley Sunday,” which enters the charts at No. 51. The flip side, the Boyce-Hart ode “Words,” notched its own spot at No. 78.

On this day in 1967, a Sunday, the Middle East was headed for the conflict known as the Six-Day War, which would begin on June 5th when Israel launched a preemptive strike against the Arab armies massing at its borders.

Closer to home, American society and culture was continuing to experience rapid (and, in some quarters, welcome) cultural changes, as evidenced by the Chicago Tribune introducing the “Working Woman” column by Carol Kleiman in its lifestyle section. It begins with its raison d’être:

Everyone talks about the working woman – but nobody knows her name. She’s been put under a microscope and dissected by the experts. She’s been told to stay home and do the dishes. And then she’s been told she can have any career she wants if she only lets herself have one.

Everyone talks to the working woman. Everyone has advice. But nobody lets her answer. Meanwhile, millions of young, single work. So do married women, with and without children. And thousands of mature women enter the labor market each year and start working for the first time in their lives or for the first time in years.

This is unique. It’s a revolution in the labor force and in equality for women, and all working women – you and I – are caught up in it. We have problems – and we have possibilities. We are not men, and the business world is still a man’s world.

In all the studies of feminine mystiques and feminine mistakes, no one has let the working woman speak for herself. What does the career girl say her problems are? Does she look at her job as a temporary career until marriage, or a lifetime profession?

Kleiman, as she notes in the column, was in the latter category.

Unless my eyes deceived me, however, this Sunday edition of the Tribune doesn’t mention anything related to youth culture. Oh, it includes a few teen guest columnists weighing in on such subjects as patriotism and volunteerism, articles about folks in the entertainment world and one on classical music, but not one mention of any of this week’s top pop releases or hits or even Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, which was due out in the U.S. on June 2nd.

Not surprising, of course, but annoying to me all the same.

Speaking of career gals and lonely hearts: 16-year-old young Wendy D. was eyeing a career in education; and, to that end, she belonged to the Future Teachers of America club at her high school. As for lonely hearts – well, she certainly wasn’t one.

Valerie S., a few years younger than Wendy, was less about the lovin’ and more about studying and playing games. Ping pong!

I share their experiences because, as I noted in the Top 5 for April 22, 1967, when we think of bygone ages – especially one as romanticized as the 1960s – we often imagine them as totally different from the present. The reality is often more mundane, however. Tectonic cultural shifts were underfoot, true, but the vast majority of kids, such as these two, still woke up, went to school, hung out with friends, dated and – as Wendy will in short order – dealt with strep throat. Some things change. Some things don’t.

Oh, and here’s one other thing that attracted my eye while browsing the Tribune’s Sunday edition – an advertisement for Sony’s latest, greatest 12-transistor portable radio. It and radios like it, for those too young to know, were the iPods of the day.

Anyway, enough of the rambling intro and onward to today’s Top 5: May 28, 1967, with songs pulled from the May 27th chart over at Weekly Top 40. (And, yes, I’ve featured a few of these songs before, but not these specific clips.)

1) The Young Rascals – “Groovin’.” The No. 1 song in the land, for the second week in a row, is this gloriously evocative song of summer.

2) Aretha Franklin – “Respect.” Jumping from No. 5 to No. 2 is this classic from the Queen of Soul. Here she is a year later in Amsterdam:

3) Neil Diamond – “Girl, You’ll Be a Woman Soon.” Entering the Top 10 is Neil Diamond’s fourth single for Bang Records. It possesses a dramatic, brooding melody and lyrics that…well, what can be said about “Girl, you’ll be a woman soon/Please come take my hand/Girl, you’ll be a woman soon/Soon you’ll need a man”? That they reflected a certain mindset of their time? Or that they were just…creepy? You be the judge.

4) Eric Burdon & the Animals – “When I Was Young.” Dropping from No. 15 to 22 is this classic counterculture ode inspired by Burdon’s father.

5) Dionne Warwick – “Alfie.” The week’s No. 37 song is what is now considered to be one of Dionne Warwick’s signature tunes. The Burt Bacharach-Hal David song, which was the theme to the 1966 movie of the same name, was originally sung by Cilia Black over the end credits for the U.K. release and earned her a Top 10 U.K. hit. For the U.S. release, however, Cher sang it, and her version stalled at No. 32 on the American charts. Warwick, who’s joked that she was the 43rd person to sing the song, recorded it only at the insistence of Bacharach, who’d wanted her to sing it all along. (That idea was nixed by the movie studio.) It would reach No. 15. Here she is, in 1972, singing it on Mike Douglas’ afternoon talk show:

And two bonuses…

6) Scott McKenzie – “San Francisco (Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair).” One of the theme songs to the Summer of Love, this hippie paean was penned by John Phillips (of the Mamas and the Papas) in order to promote the Monterey Pop Festival. This clip finds McKenzie lip-syncing the words on French TV…

7) And, finally: The times they were a-changin’. That’s for sure. On Thursday of the following week, aka June 1st, Jefferson Airplane flew onto the set of American Bandstand and sang the trippy “White Rabbit” and “Somebody to Love,” which had jumped from No. 22 to No. 17 and was about to rise even higher, No. 9, by week’s end.

Fifty years ago today, the Summer of Love was in the offing for 16-year-old Wendy D. of Allegheny County, Pa., the home of Pittsburgh, three smaller cities and a bevy of boroughs and townships – but also a summer of love troubles, as often happens in teen romances. I’m sure she was vaguely aware of the former when she wrote the entry, but as for the latter? She wasn’t clairvoyant. (If she was, my hunch is she wouldn’t have continued to see Tom, who was but one of several suitors. Let’s just say things don’t work out so well between them and leave it at that…for now.)

The movie they saw, A Man for All Seasons, was released on December 12, 1966. In today’s world, of course, all but the biggest of blockbusters have left the theaters within five months and are prepping for their blu-ray/DVD release and/or PPV debut. Back then? Things stuck around. Movies routinely started small, at select theaters, and slowly widened in scope, hopscotching the country and media markets. (Mass distribution, where a movie opens on hundreds – if not thousands – of screens at a time, didn’t become commonplace until 1974 and The Trial of Billy Jack.)

The top TV shows for the 1966-’67 season were (in order) Bonanza, The Red Skelton Hour, Andy Griffith Show, Lucy Show and Jackie Gleason Show. The Lawrence Welk Show, which was in a four-way tie for No. 10, was a few spots higher than The Smother Brothers Comedy Hour.

On the music front: According to the Weekly Top 40, the Supremes’ “The Happening” was the No. 1 single on the charts.

I featured that song in the April 22nd, 1967 Top 5, of course. And, between that entry and the one for April 2nd, I’ve spotlighted the top five songs on this week’s Top 40 chart fairly recently. As a result, I’ll be digging deep into the chart for today’s countdown.

And, with that caveat out of the way, here’s today’s Top 5, May 13, 1967 (via Weekly Top 40).

1) The Happenings – “I Got Rhythm.” The No. 9 song this week is this…kitschy delight? It was one of four Top 40 singles the group scored from 1966 through ’68. This one, like their 1966 hit “See You in September,” topped out at No. 3.

2) The Mamas & the Papas – “Creeque Alley.” Jumping from No. 44 to No. 22 is this self-mythologizing song, which tells of the formation of the group.

3) Jefferson Airplane – “Somebody to Love.” Holding steady at No. 31 in its seventh week on the charts is this Summer of Love anthem from the Airplane, which would eventually fly into the Top 10. Here they are performing it at the Monterey Pop Festival on June 17th.

4) The Who – “Happy Jack.” One of the week’s Power Plays is this now-classic song, which jumped from No. 51 to No. 41.

5) The Marvelettes – “When You’re Young and in Love.” Another of the week’s Power Plays is this lovely Van McCoy-penned song, which would eventually reach No. 23. An interesting piece of trivia: It’s the group’s only single to chart in the U.K. Another piece of trivia: It was Wendy D.’s theme song… nah, I’m making that last bit up. But it should’ve been!

And two bonuses, both pulled from the “New This Week” section:

6) Marvin Gaye & Tammi Terrell – “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough.” The first of the many classic Marvin & Tammi duets. Here, they perform the Ashford & Simpson-penned song on The Tonight Show:

7) The Grass Roots – “Let’s Live for Today.” Debuting at No. 87 is this ‘60s classic, which would eventually make it to No. 8. Who knew that it began life as an Italian pop song written by an ex-pat Brit beat group? Not me. Wikipedia gives the rundown of its complicated history.